Projecting Video On Curved Surfaces

Jochen Bedersdorfer writes "According to golem.de, a research project in the area of Augmented Reality created a technology to project videos onto arbitrary existing screen surfaces, like wallpapered walls or window curtains. ... Quite awesome. Now I can use this ugly corner in my living room effectively."

Comments

Imagine

[foidulus]

being able to project porn onto boobs! The possibilities are limitless

Re:Imagine

[aussie_a]

Imagine being able to tape having sex with someone and while your taping it, project it onto the boobs ;)

Omnimax @ Home?

[Viral Fly-by]

With the rapid expansion of relatively high-end (5|6|7).1 surround sound stereo equipment in homes that is beginning to be joined by HDTV, could a technology like this bring a new option to table? Could we have something like omnimax theatres in our homes?

Interior Decorating from Slashdot

[lukewarmfusion]

You have an ugly corner in your living room, and you're going to "improve" it by projecting some arbitrary image onto it?

Try paintings. Or a ficus.

Re:Interior Decorating from Slashdot

[tehcyder]

Yes, but you could project an image of a cool living room onto it and hide the fact that it was ugly.

Re:Interior Decorating from Slashdot

[Cumstien]

He seems like a normal guy, but why does he have a painting of a ficus projected in the corner of his house?

Re:Interior Decorating from Slashdot

[AndroidCat]

It could be much worse. WallClippy: "I see that you appear to be pregnant. May I offer my congratulations?"

curved surfaces?

[deathazre]

The problem with projecting an image onto a non-flat surface is you can only get it to look proper from one small area. Anywhere else and it's still distorted.

Re:curved surfaces?

[deathazre]

As I said, you can still only make it look proper on an irregular surface from one small area. Leave that area and it's distorted again.
What I probably should have said in the first post: all this technology does is make it so you can move that area around. (of course that area is always going to be where the camera is, in this case)

Re:curved surfaces?

[hcdejong]

Actually, the parent *is* right. Consider the extreme case of projecting into a corner: the projection looks right when you view from the same area where the camera is/was, but try looking at the image from a significantly different angle (say, a right angle to one of the walls). The picture will be severely distorted then.

Re:curved surfaces?

[AndroidCat]

That could have some advantages. "In order to see this movie properly, we're going to have snuggle in close to see it without distortion. It's not me, you understand, it's just the projection system." (Which would be a disadvantage if you have the Trekkie XXXL Club over.)

Re:curved surfaces?

[SanLouBlues]

True, but think how nifty it would be to project a photo or painting onto a corner, then copy it like the masters did with the camera obscura, and let people ooh and ahh when the walk by it. Or, distort the image to fit an outward corner, then paint it on a flat wall to give the impression of more space.

It would fit perfectly in any modern art museum.

Well done.

[Devar]

Good one guys, you just slashdotted Germany.

Working link (for now)

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonslashdotted link (in German, though)

Solution looking for a problem?

[GillBates0]

Video projectors will play a major role in future home entertainment and edutainment applications - ranging from movies and television, over computer games, to multimedia presentation.

Before televisions became the norm, projectors were a common sight around middle-class homes. I remember my father used to show us home movies, Disney cartoons, and science documentaries on a compact Super 8mm projector on idle evenings.

I don't remember the size or even the presence of the "canvas screen" being a big issue. A blank wall did just fine (without any significant loss of picture quality IMHO). If a smaller/larger image was desired, the projector was just moved nearer/away from the wall as necessary. Not such a big deal. Ofcourse the room had to be pitch dark because of the low contrast produced by the projector.

IMHO, this is a solution looking for a problem. I agree the ability to project on curved surfaces might be a bonus, but the pictures did not reveal any significant advantage.

I was more impressed by the "light insensitive" projector that was on /. a few weeks back - it could display images/video effectively in bright light - can't find the link.

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[hcdejong]

Lots of people don't have blank walls. Colored wallpaper, non-smooth plastered walls, walls covered with paintings etc. are all unusable with a normal projector.

Re:Solution looking for a problem?

[Znork]

If it's unusable with a normal projector it'll still be unusable with projection technologies like this.

If it's usable with a normal projector you'll get a better quality image with a projector like this.

It isnt magic. It can compensate for color shifts that would cause distortion, but you still pay in image quality by losing contrast and color range. For an extreme example, take a black and white striped wall. As you're unlikely to have an entirely unreflective surface on a wall, you could create a compensated picture by strongly increasing illumination on the black parts and decreasing it on the white part. However, the maximum brightness of the image becomes the maximum brightness reflectable by the black parts, which decreases the contrast range. Same thing with any other surface, you'll lose quality, you just wont lose as much, or in such a visually disturbing fashion as you would with an ordinary projector.

So if you care enough about image quality to bother getting an expensive projector you'd probably want to get a projection screen anyway.

Still, it would be quite useful when you either dont care that much about the image quality, or in situations where you have to project on a not quite suitable surface and cant use a screen.

Projecting onto clouds

[otisg]

Funny, I was just thinking about projecting video onto clouds the other day. You probably couldn't cut code using clouds as your gigant display unit, but you could probably watch some 'herbal movies' on them...

Re:Projecting onto clouds

[dcigary]

Disney has already ventured into projecting videos on uncommon surfaces, such as the water spray screen in Fantasmic and the Grim Grinning Ghosts effect in the Haunted Mansion attraction.

This sort of technology was shown last year....

[N Monkey]

... at Siggraph 2003.

There was one demonstration showing projection onto the inside of a translucent sphere, while in the paper "iLamps: Geometrically Aware and self-configuring projectors" Raskar et al showed a system that could also combine the output of several projectors. It was quite impressive.

Not quite curved on a cricket ground....

[burnttoy]

At most cricket grounds over here (esp. for internationals like the current Windies tour) sponsor's logos are printed on the pitch (painted on the grass). BUT. The best camera angles for cricket are from a high up camera inthe stands. So the sponsors have to predistort their logos so that it looks good in a long, panoramic, high shot.

I thought that it was quite clever when I first saw it.

Re:Not quite curved on a cricket ground....

[Simonetta]

Let's not forget the anamorphic skull in Holbein's painting "The Ambassadors" from 500 years ago.

One way to do it:

[Janosh]

I haven't RTFA (/.'ed) A norwegian company who specialices in exhibition designs use a procedure to project images on walls in smal spaces, or curved surfaces. They build the room or sphere in a 3d program, and maps the wall with the images they will project. Then place the camera where the projector will be placed, and render. Now you have a video you can project that will fit the wall precicely.

Useful

[oasis3582]

So does this mean I can project video onto my girlfriend to make her look like Keira Knightley? :) oh, and don't worry, I'm just kidding about having a girlfriend...

Disneyland

[Therlin]

Disneyland has been playing with something that sounds similar to this.

If you go here and scroll down halfway to "Sleeping Beauty Castle gets a new look", you can see a couple tests that Disneyland did to "paint" the castle. One painting it gold with a ribbon around it, and another one turning it into a US flag.

Useful for odd projection angles?

[ericzundel]

In our church, we are having issues mounting a projector in a place that is inconspicuous. Most of the inconspicuous places introduce too much of a keystone effect. That means that we will have to fix a (very expensive) projector to project with a special lens to one and only one screen. It might work fine when there is a large group, but if a smaller group wanted to use it in a more intimate setting, everyone will be sitting up front craning their necks. It would be neat if we could just point the projector at any surface and have it automatically correct for whatever distortion happened to be there.

"I was a 98 Pound Weakling..."

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

"...until I discovered the Slashdot workout plan! Sure, I still spend 8 hours a day in a dim server room and all my cardio comes from playing Counter Strike, but with this new Slashdot brand portable non-optimal surface video projection system I now have a full-body projection of vintage Arnold Schwarzenegger on me at all times! Okay, so he's a lot taller than me and that puts his weiner in the middle of my chest, but that *still* gets me more chicks than before! Thanks, Slashdot!"

Meep meep!

[Julian Morrison]

This is so much looking to be used as a "road runner" practical joke. Leave one of these projecting an "open door" and a "hallway" onto a solid brick wall. For the truly evil, project a "tunnel" complete with "diversion sign" onto the ground beside a road, at a sharp bend...